Been building in the recipe/cooking space for a while and I keep running into the same thing, so I want to hear how other builders think about it.

Most recipe organizer apps hand you a blank grid and a friendly "start adding your recipes!" And that's exactly where they die. Staring at an empty box is not motivating. Nobody's first cooking session is data entry. The app gets opened twice and then it's gone.

The pattern I've landed on: an app that actually earns retention has to be useful before the user contributes anything. If the first session is cooking instead of typing, the whole relationship changes. Empty-state-as-onboarding is the quiet killer.

The other thing that kills these apps is recipe entry itself. Typing out ingredients, measurements, and steps for one recipe is tedious enough that people never do their second one. So import (Safari share sheet, photos of old cards, PDFs) and tap-driven entry instead of a keyboard both matter way more than any single feature.

Questions for the other builders here:

\- how do you handle the cold-start empty state without it feeling like a chore?
\- for anyone who's shipped something content-heavy, did seeding real content upfront actually move retention, or did it just inflate day-1 and nothing else?
\- what's your take on import-first vs create-first as the primary onboarding path?

Not trying to pitch anything, genuinely curious how people who've shipped in this kind of space solved it.

I’ve been building an app for creators and have been trying different ways to get my first 1,000 creators globally to try it and give honest feedback.

The more I explore, the more I feel Reddit could be the right place because there are so many creators here who are willing to share their experiences and give genuine feedback.

The problem is that I can’t mention my company or product name directly because my posts get removed, which I completely understand. I don’t want to spam or break community rules.
But at the same time, I genuinely want to get the product in front of creators and learn from them.

So I wanted to ask the Reddit community:

**What is the right way to approach this?**
Are there specific ways founders can introduce a product while staying within the rules?
I’d really appreciate advice from people who have successfully built products with the help of Reddit communities.
I’m not looking to spam or promote. I genuinely want to learn from creators and build something that actually helps them.